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hWhat the Organisation of Tomorrow Looks Like?Bryan FenechFounder and Director, Building the Organisation of Tomorrow

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About Building the Organisation of Tomorrow

Building the Organisation of Tomorrow aims to increase awareness of progressive organisational models and management practices as pre-requisites to success in the 21st century knowledge economy, dramatically improving commercial, social and ecological outcomes for organisational stakeholders.

Connect with me and join the Group on LinkedIn – au.linkedin.com/pub/bryan-fenech/2/23a/730/

Follow me on Twitter – https://twitter.com/BryanFenech

Bryan FenechFounder and Director – Building the Organisation of Tomorrow

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Key themes• Why we need a new form of organisation?• What does the organisation of the future look like?• What are the implications for us now?• Areas for further research

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The greatest crisis in history• A critical flaw in basic organisational design increasingly

exposed by 21st century technological and socio-economic developments

• Managerialism and bureaucracy – the smartest guys in the room keep making really dumb decisions – degradation of organisational performance and destruction of value

• Externalising and obscuring costs – exploitation and inequality, environmental degradation, and animal cruelty as a result of shifting costs from the balance sheet to governments, the public, and the environment

• Over concentration of power – manipulating markets and democratic processes – stifling debate

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Organisation of the future• Research across a

number of dimensions to get a comprehensive picture• A comparative study

to give context – traditional versus future organisation

Determine

s

• Environment and Context

Frames

• Enterprise Logic

Requires

• Strategic Imperatives

Facilitated by

• Key Capabilities

Enabled by

• Governance, Leadership and Social Practices

• Structure

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Environment and context

Traditional Organisation Organisation of the Future

A socio-economic era built on the technological breakthroughs of the industrial revolution

A socio-economic era built on the technological breakthroughs of the ICT revolution (and now robotics and biotech)

Increasing globalisation – opening up of vast new markets for products and services

Unprecedented globalization – competition, dynamic and volatile markets, short product lifecycles

A world of unlimited resources to be exploited – the New World, Africa, India, China and the East

A world of limited resources to be conserved and sustained

Positivism as the dominant worldview Constructivism as a challenge to the dominant positivist world view

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Enterprise logic

Traditional Organisation Organisation of the Future

Raison d’etre – a vehicle for achieving personal financial wealth and power

Raison d’etre – a vehicle for achieving social as well as financial value and meeting a broad range of objectives

Beneficiaries – a narrow set of shareholders, the capitalist project

Beneficiaries – a broad range of stakeholders, the social enterprise project

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Strategic imperatives

Traditional Organisation Organisation of the Future

Standardisation and repeatability – mass production

Differentiation and innovation – mass customisation

Size and stability Nimbleness, flexibility and responsiveness

A relentless managerial focus on cost containment, reducing unit costs

A relentless leadership focus on investment in new products and services

Economies of scale Economies of scope

“Sweating” value from tangible assets – property, plant and machinery

Creating value in intangible assets – knowledge and the social capital that underpins it

Beating the competition Building strategic alliances and partnerships

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Key capabilities

Traditional Organisation Organisation of the Future

Strategy formulation Strategy implementation

Operational management Project management

Development and application of specialist technical knowledge

The commoditisation of specialist technical knowledge and the need to dynamically reconfigure and apply collaborative knowledge resources – “dynamic capabilities” and “absorptive capacity”

Management – causal rationality, from a pre-determined goal and given set of means identify the fastest, cheapest, most efficient etc

Leadership and entrepreneurialism – effectual reasoning, from a given set of means allow goals to emerge contingently over time

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Governance, leadership and social practicesTraditional Organisation Organisation of the Future

Application of principles of command and control economics to internal organisation – central control of resources and planning

Application of principles of market economics to internal organisation – devolving of power and decision making and free flow of resources

Management practices embedded with the strategic intent of command and control

Leadership practices embedded with the strategic intent of empowerment and facilitation

Rules based on rational legalistic principles – sine ira ac studio

A negotiated order based on principles of community, and renewal practices required to manage sustainability and success

Centralised leadership Distributed leadership

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Structure

Traditional Organisation Organisation of the Future

Bureaucracy, hierarchy Networked, cellularSegregation of labour by discipline into functional silos

Integration of labour into autonomous multi-disciplinary teams

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Ideas for further research• 3 things to consider• The Organisation of Tomorrow as an emergent and political

phenomenon• The signification of hierarchy with structure as a justification for

retaining layers of management – the “semi-structured organisation”

• Ambidexterity and matrix organisation as reactionary expressions